1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an object detection device that detects an object by using an image captured with an imaging unit carried on a movable body.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method using optical flow is available as a technique for detecting an object by using an image captured by a camera carried on a movable body such as a vehicle. The optical flow is a velocity field in each point (pixel, region, feature point) in an image from a series of images that are continuous in time and represents the motion of an object in the image by a vector. A technique for detecting the motion of another vehicle or the like that blocks the cruise of a host vehicle by using the magnitude and direction of the optical flow vectors has been disclosed. The device described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-157779 (JP-A-2005-157779) calculates a displacement of a movable body from a first image including a plane of motion on which the movable body moves, obtains optical flow from a second image that excludes the plane of motion and includes a target object, and calculates the distance to the target object on the basis of the displacement of the movable body and the optical flow.
In order to detect information of an object that blocks the movement of the movable body by using the optical flow, the displacement of the movable body itself is also necessary, as in the above-descried device. For obtaining the displacement of a movable body with high accuracy by image processing, a load of computational processing is high.